effective control of the protectorate's territory at last. The Rif War is still considered controversial among historians. Some see in it a harbinger of the decolonization process in North Africa. Others consider it one of the last colonial wars, as it was the decision of the Spanish to conquer the Rif – nominally part of their Moroccan protectorate but de facto independent – that catalyzed the entry of France in 1924. The Rif War left a deep memory both in Spain and in Morocco. The Riffian insurgency of the 1920s can be interpreted as a precursor to the Algerian War of Independence, which took place three decades later. Origins Spain, 13 kilometers across the Straits of Gibraltar from Africa, claimed influence over the Morocco region at the Berlin Conference (1884-1885). By the early 20th century, Morocco was divided into protectorates ruled by France and Spain. The Rif region had been assigned to Spain, but given that the Sultans of Morocco had been unable to exert control over the region, Spanish sovereignty over the Rif was strictly de jure with little practical control. For centuries, the Berber tribes of the Rif had fought off any attempt of outsiders to impose control on them. While the Rif mountains were visible to Europeans from ships in the Mediterranean Sea, Europeans had rarely if ever ventured into the area. Walter Burton Harris, the Morocco correspondent for The Times, who covered the war, wrote that as late as 1912 only "one or two Europeans had been able to visit the cedar forests that lie south of Fez. A few had traveled in the southern Atlas and pushed on into the Sus...and that was almost all". As Harris wrote, the Berbers "were often as inhospitable to the Arab as they were to the foreigner", and generally killed any outsiders who ventured into their territory. Vincent Sheean, who covered the war for The New York Times, wrote that the Rif was a truly beautiful countryside of "Crimson mountains flung against a sky of hieratic blue, gorges magnificent and terrifying, peaceful green valleys between protecting precipices", a place that reminded him of his native Colorado. The Rif was also rich in high-grade iron, which could be easily extracted via open pit mining. The promise of the Spanish state collecting revenues in the form of taxes and royalties from iron mining here was an incentive for it to bring